Model Kidnap Suspect Says He Needed Money to Treat Cancer

LONDON (AP) — The chief suspect in the abduction of a British model has told investigators that he was drawn into the kidnap scheme unwittingly and did it to raise money to treat his leukemia.

According to a police deposition obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, Lukasz Pawel Herba said he was hired by a group of Romanians to rent properties around Europe to store garments they were selling. He said it paid 500,000 pounds ($650,000).

Herba said he later met the model, Chloe Aylilng, in Paris where he posed as a photographer and she had come for a job, but when he discovered the Romanians intended to kidnap her he backed out.

He said the Romanians later kidnapped her independently, and that he came to aid her after seeing her on a deep-web auction site.

Model Chloe Ayling, right, prepares to get on a motorbike in Coulsdon, south London, Tuesday Aug. 8, 2017. The lawyer for British model Chloe Ayling says police are holding a suspect in her kidnapping. The 20-year-old says she was lured to Italy with the promise of a photo shoot, then drugged and kidnapped by a man who advertised her as a sex slave on the criminal “dark web.” Ayling says her captor released her at the British consulate in Milan. Her lawyer acknowledges that aspects of the case seem bizarre.(Georgina Stubbs/PA via AP)